This Week In Crowdsourcing: News Roundup, Feb. 21

A curated, weekly roundup of interesting news on crowd-driven business, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, open innovation and the new collaborative economy.

There is no single crowdfunding market in Europe, a problem for local startups and companies looking to tap into a global foothold. In this article, Jouko Ahvenainen examines the fragmentation of the European market and what consolidation could mean for the future of crowdfunding. [European Startup Crowdfunding Market Is Too Fragmented, GrowVC]

 NASA is encouraging practical uses of its technologies by allowing new products to be crowdsourced from its patents. Working with the crowdsourcing site Marblar, they hope address the existing gap between academic research and applied use: “There’s a big gulf between turning science that’s happening all around … into new products,” said Dan Perez, founder and CEO of Marblar. [NASA ups ante on crowdsourcing patents, FCW]

Do you love or hate lurkers? They make up 90% of the folks that follow your social media channels, and while they may not appear to be engaged–that doesn’t mean they aren’t paying attention. Lurkers can in fact, under the right conditions, become participative and contributive crowdsourcers. Here Nick Kellet provides tips for unlocking this social ROI. [Participation Funnel: 7 Tips to Draw Lurkers into Crowdsourcing, Listly]

Executives and marketing experts offer the top suggestions for effectively using crowdsourcing for good branding. These 7 tips demonstrate concrete examples of companies expanding resources, accelerating product development, and testing appeal and functionality with the crowd. [7 Ways Crowdsourcing Can Boost Your Brand and Customer Loyalty, Computerworld]

Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site with over 5.5 million online backers funding projects, has alerted its community of a security breach that compromised member usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. No credit card data was taken, CEO Yancey Strickler said in a blog post, but creating a new password is recommended. The breach is not the only one to strike this week: Forbes reported it was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. [Kickstarter hacked, user data stolen, CNET]

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